Conventional Lullabies
The first two bands in this post are some of my favourite Vancouver bands and appear to prove once again that the boringness of a city is inversely proportional to the quality of its music.
The Battles - Suzanne
This song is an epic of minor proportions: a series of carefully thought out and meticulously arranged changes in tempo and melody, trapped within the claustrophobic interior of someone's bedroom or closet. A band of full grown men playing almost on top of one another, the drums perched precariously on the bass cabinet, the organ buried beneath the torsos and limbs of the guitarists. Like the membership of an entire fraternity occupying a single telephone booth, the smallness of the space occupied by this song is fundamental to its aesthetic: it's intentionally outside the realm of the hi-fi, of the wide open spaces offered by the multi-tracking beasts of expensive recording studios. Some unhelpful points of reference might include Guided by Voices, the first Shins album, or Sloan without a record deal.
[buy]
Young and Sexy - Conventional Lullabies
This is pop music without the saccharine sweetness that it can so easily succumb to. Despite the perfect harmonies, syncopated hand claps, and reverb washed guitars, the song has a darker melancholy core. Like those Danish candies that are liquorice on the outside but salt and pepper in the middle, the song is a complex set of ideas held tightly within the conventional pop song format. That is, if by conventional you mean "amazing" and pop song you mean "this will never be played on the radio".
[buy]
The Skygreen Leopards - the heron (a dream of waters, pt. 2)
The mixture of the falsetto and the just-woke-up vocals on this song are very endearing. It's like one of those pleasant hangovers when a strong cup of coffee and a pile of ibuprofen is all you need to make everything make sense again.
[buy]
The Battles - Suzanne
This song is an epic of minor proportions: a series of carefully thought out and meticulously arranged changes in tempo and melody, trapped within the claustrophobic interior of someone's bedroom or closet. A band of full grown men playing almost on top of one another, the drums perched precariously on the bass cabinet, the organ buried beneath the torsos and limbs of the guitarists. Like the membership of an entire fraternity occupying a single telephone booth, the smallness of the space occupied by this song is fundamental to its aesthetic: it's intentionally outside the realm of the hi-fi, of the wide open spaces offered by the multi-tracking beasts of expensive recording studios. Some unhelpful points of reference might include Guided by Voices, the first Shins album, or Sloan without a record deal.
[buy]
Young and Sexy - Conventional Lullabies
This is pop music without the saccharine sweetness that it can so easily succumb to. Despite the perfect harmonies, syncopated hand claps, and reverb washed guitars, the song has a darker melancholy core. Like those Danish candies that are liquorice on the outside but salt and pepper in the middle, the song is a complex set of ideas held tightly within the conventional pop song format. That is, if by conventional you mean "amazing" and pop song you mean "this will never be played on the radio".
[buy]
The Skygreen Leopards - the heron (a dream of waters, pt. 2)
The mixture of the falsetto and the just-woke-up vocals on this song are very endearing. It's like one of those pleasant hangovers when a strong cup of coffee and a pile of ibuprofen is all you need to make everything make sense again.
[buy]
posted by ian at 4:34 PM
3 Comments:
The battles rocked the Railway on saturday night. Even if they did only play one old song. I wonder if Chloe Sevigny enjoyed the show?!
I love that new Battles record so much.
I would even go so far as to say "Oh so very much."
The Battles are pretty hard to describe. I worry that those three comparisons will probably scare off more people than they will attract. As for Young and Sexy I can't get into them.
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